Social diversity has always been an integral feature of public and private life worlds. This has become even more relevant due to the spiraling globalization that connects remote people and places into a global system. In the last decades, the recognition and following politicization of differences developed in manifold ways and spheres. Activism, politics and academia alike became committed to the task of creating more equal conditions on local and global scales. However, at this point of history this commitment is being openly questioned by reactionary forces. All over the world we recognize a surge of populism and nationalism questioning the critical commitment to equal opportunities, participation and inclusion. New and known –isms (racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism…) are deployed to draw or revive local as well as global (b)orders between nations, ‘cultures’, groups and individuals – between ‘them’ and ‘us’.

In academia, the Social Sciences are especially well-equipped to critically accompany and to analyze the current two-fold dynamics: As students and scholars we are not only responsible for identifying, analyzing and evaluating the impact of such social, economic and political dynamics that foster inequality. Furthermore, our scientific expertise gained through analysis and research puts us in the responsible position to raise our voice and counter such harmful nostalgic arguments. Diversity sensitive expertise does not only in itself creates counterstrategies but also supports those (still) invested and committed in the endorsement of local and global inclusion, Human Rights, ethics, social justice, intergroup and intercultural dialogues, participation and empathetic community-building.

By sharing knowledge and research from diverse interdisciplinary perspectives on local as well as global issues connected to the dynamics of Globalization and Diversity, we aim to equip students from different cultural and disciplinary communities with new insights, modes of inquiry and methodological approaches to complex social challenges. Moreover, we want to disseminate practical findings, facilitate new ways of thinking, foster intercultural understanding and sensitivity as well as collective appreciation of diversity itself.